LIVE! Sonic Boom 2011 – Jane’s Addiction Metric Social Distortion Cake Manchester Orchestra Middle Class Rut Joy Formidable Hollerado Christian Hansen and the Autistics

Ritzy of The Joy Formidable

<rant>Why aren’t there all sorts of great photos for this post? I’ll tell you why – despite emailing the promoter’s general email address twice, and the specific person in charge of photo credentials twice, I never got a single reply back from them, not even to tell me no. Unbelievable, hey. But karma does have its retribution. Oh yes it does.</rant>

Everyone panned the lineup for this festival, and I have to agree that Jane’s Addiction is not an appropriate headliner for a music festival anymore. It’s probably been a decade since they were, in fact (maybe two). Be that as it may, what Sonic Boom 2011 lacked in superstar power, it more than made up for in depth. Any festival that has Hollerado and Joy Formidable as its second and third artists of the day has definitely done something right.

Christian Hansen and the Autistics

The crowd was fairly quiet for most of CHATA’s set, with a little more enthusiasm for their biggest “hit”, “Cocaine Trade”. To be fair, it was awfully early in the day for live music as they started up just after 11:30 in the morning – I’m not even sure most musicians are even awake at that time. The large stage seemed to dwarf the local band, and was undoubtedly the largest stage they’ve ever been on. Still, it was my first time seeing them, and I was, if not impressed, nodding approvingly.

Hollerado

This completed my hat track of seeing Hollerado live – three times in the last year (ten months to be precise), with a set at the Pawn Shop, and then at their own Nacho Party during South by Southwest, and now Sonic Boom. The first time I saw them was at 12:30am, then 4:00pm during SXSW, and now 12:30. I guess next time I see them we’ll be having breakfast (probably still nachos, though).

Regardless of my math skills, Hollerado is always a kick-ass amazing party-like-mad live band. They didn’t disappoint, though it was probably my least favorite of the three sets – more to do with the horrid sound in the venue than anything. I still absolutely love this band, and would see them again in a heartbeat.

Joy Formidable

The Joy Formidable is the ONLY band I left the VIP beer gardens to watch, as I definitely wanted to be as close as possible to Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd. They honestly blew me away. Hell, they blew everyone away. From that moment on, anyone I talked to on twitter or live said it was the highlight of their day. It was definitely mine.

They played all my favorites – “The Magnifying Glass”, “Abacus”, “Whirring”, and finished with an angry vengeance that they took out on their instruments, each other, and the crowd. It will undoubtedly be talked about at water colors for years. I only wish I could see them headlining their own show like Calgary gets to tonight. Soon, my friends, soon.

Middle Class Rut

I missed Middle Class Rut’s entire set because of insanely long food lines, which took 75 minutes to crawl through. And it wasn’t all that’s good. Neither was MCR from the reviews I caught from people that actually saw them.

Ritzy - again.

Manchester Orchestra

Manchester Orchestra impressed the crap out of me. They reminded me of My Morning Jacket, but with a darker undercurrent and grittier presence. They are the only band yesterday that sold me an album based on their performance (of those I didn’t already own of course).

Cake

Cake was probably the ONLY band in the entire day that played longer than they were supposed to – everyone else, at least by my count, cut their set short (possibly because of the sound, as a number of bands also complained about the sound on the stage, as well as it sucking in the audience).

I find I grow tired of Cake songs for the most part, and don’t consider myself a fan. “Short Skirt Long Jacket”, for example, I loved for about two months, then I was done with it. Is it because of their sound? Or because Sonic overplays the crap out of them? I don’t know, but they did a fine job live, I’d see them again. But I probably still don’t consider myself a fan.

Social Distortion

Well, Social D didn’t sell me an album, but it was a very good show. They poured on the guitars, heaped some energy on top of them, and lit the fire. It was one of those shows where they play songs, and you think to yourself – this is their song? Cool.

Metric

Emily and the rest of her band played an energetic, emotional set that everyone in the crowd loved, including me. I’ll admit it, Metric’s a bit of a guilty pleasure for me – and they played all my favorite songs, finishing with a raucous, chaotic frenzy of “Stadium Love”.

Jane’s Addiction

Jane’s Addiction isn’t a bonafide headliner for a music festival anymore. Their set didn’t convince me otherwise. Though they seemed to be getting a decent response from the crowd (albeit a little thinned out after Metric concluded), it seemed like every second song was some extraordinary rock song of theirs and you thought to yourself “OH MY GOD IT’S JANE’S ADDICTION”. However, this was interspersed with in-between tracks that were tedious, “look at me I’m a legend”, over-the-top, tired crap. By the fourth or fifth song, it had ALL devolved into the latter.

About halfway through their set my friend Gary and I moved to the back on the benches, and just half paid attention. At which point I tweeted “this set from Jane’s Addiction is like watching The Thin Red Line. You keep hoping it’ll get better, but it doesn’t”.

…

All in all, I had a pretty good time. But this festival will need a lot of help to just recover, never mind grow to what I’m guessing its founders were hoping it would become.

The decision to move the event indoors was completely ludicrous. The Expo Centre has – hands down – the absolute WORST SOUND of any live music venues we have in the city. Hands down. I’m officially boycotting any shows there ever again. It was a beautiful day, and their stated reasons for the move (weather) was completely bogus – nobody, and I mean nobody, bought it, everyone knew it was because of ticket sales, and it made an even bigger hole to climb out of for next year. The lack of being able to get food in a timely manner is completely unforgivable – Northlands knew that was an issue during Freezing Man, and with the bigger crowds for Sonic Boom, someone should’ve figured out an alternate plan. Finally, this city demands an ACTUAL headliner for a festival, not some band whose best days were in the late 80’s and early 90’s. That’s just embarrassing.

I certainly hope the festival is back next year – I think it really could be something big, and I have plenty of ideas floating around my head. If the organizers want to talk, they know where to find me. Or if they want to be all defensive and never speak to me again, I suppose that’s an option too – but it certainly won’t do anything to make things better.

Tagged as: concert review, edmonton music blog, review, Sonic Boom 2011